The surprise pregnancy which kicked off Bump in 2021 has led to this fifth and final season, premiering on Stan this Boxing Day. Eliza Janssen will miss the show’s hilarious highs and heartbreaking lows – and previews what’s to come in the final eps.
Bump: Season 5
Along with screaming the lyrics to Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy and eating fresh seafood until you spew on your nice Christmassy button-up, there’s a new Aussie festive tradition in town. Ever since 2021, Boxing Day has continually been the due date for each new season of Stan Original series Bump—perhaps the perfect complement (or antidote, TBH) to your own family’s seasonal squabbling.
We’re a bit devo that this year’s annual check-in with the extended Chalmers-Davis clan will be our last, but at least the massively popular series is ending on a high note. It’s always been a distinctively Down Under story, unafraid to tackle the hilarious highs and heartbreaking lows that Oly (Nathalie Morris) and her fam face with breezy, antipodean attitude.
In season five, for example, Dom (Angus Sampson) battles a spider on the toilet, a magpie swoops onto the family’s dinner table at the most opportune time, and frazzled matriarch Angie (Claudia Karvan) is finally convinced to get matching tats with partner Edith (Anita Hegh). Oly is still wrangling the obsessive-compulsive tendencies and fierce feminism that fuel her: she frankly explains to her tot what a vibrator’s for, and with a new baby on the way, she’s mapped out a birthing “decision tree…optimising outcomes from a range of divergent scenarios.” Some things never change!
Then again, some things really do. Bump has always been clever in moving fluidly across its characters’ futures, ensuring we’re always catching up with Oly and her vast community of kin at the most interesting chronological moment. We made it through the high-school blame game drama together—with year 11 student Oly realising the father of her surprise “toilet baby” wasn’t her boyfriend, but rather secret hook-up Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr). That’s all come good, as Oly and Santi are now married and raising thriving bub Jacinda (Ava Cannon), obviously named after Aotearoa’s female PM.
Jumping forward in time again for a clever mirror to season one’s surprise pregnancy, Oly and Santi are expecting once more. They’re now a bit older and wiser, and in a much more stable space for babe number two… or so you’d hope. Playing an Oly who’s newly unemployed and struggling with her mum’s frightening illness, Morris is tasked with some of her most intense emotional swings yet, and the actor entirely delivers: when we see Oly collapse to the floor in tears, it’s practically impossible to stay dry-eyed ourselves.
Bump has also always shared out the trouble for its older characters to tackle, too, mostly in the obstacles faced by creator and star Karvan as Oly’s mum Angie. In a broad and eccentric ensemble, Karvan always manages to ground the series in realism, her dialogue ringing true in the most quirky and sitcom-y of scenes. Season five features a gorgeous sequence of Jacinda and her ‘Grangie’ driving through a car wash together, the trippy lights, twinkling soundtrack and intimate, held moment acting as a metaphor for the arrival of Oly’s new baby—for Angie passing the torch to new generations.
We’ve cheered her on through later-in-life revelations, namely in how Ange found unexpected love with Edith, who happens to also be Dom’s sister. (There’s an amusing refresher on this complicated family tree in the new season’s opening scene, with Angie’s oncologist forced to pack her office full of extra chairs for aaaaall of Angie’s loved ones) However, the most powerful aspect of the entire series has arguably been the character’s ongoing fight against cancer.
Asking the loveable cast of characters in Bump to confront their dear mum’s potential death is huge, in a show that has predominantly focused upon birth, new life, opportunity. The writers keep the laughs coming through each chemo session and setback: “She’s a good swimmer, no doubt”, Santi’s mum Rosa (Paula García) says of the news that Angie is facing a mastectomy, “flat chested and flat butt.” It’s still that kind of a show, but with an enhanced existential emphasis in this final chapter. Karvan’s rage, grief and redemptive peace across her character’s health journey will leave your couch covered in snotty tissues, and then along comes Oly and Santi’s new bub, with a chosen name that might just emotionally destroy you for good.
When a new season of Bump gets dropped down the chimney each year, we see our own fears and weaknesses reflected in Oly’s unpredictable coming-of-age. We put away the tinsel and torn wrapping paper, start locking in plans for New Year’s Eve, maybe make a few resolutions—and a subtle undercurrent of terror sets in, that the new year ahead might be full of the same calamity and chaos that Bump’s teen mum has dealt with over five seasons.
But we all have relatives like Bowie (Christian Byers), Oly’s slacker bro who seems to finally land on an artistic calling in this season (all it took was Angie screaming at him to “get a job!…why does nobody in my family have a job!”). Or mentors like fan fave Bernadita (Claudia De Giusti), Santi’s gran who instantly brightens every scene in which she appears. Or little people to treasure who can cause as much mayhem as Jacinda, who’s totally down to steal a stranger’s puppy if it looks a bit like Bluey. It’s the who, not the what, that makes the season count.
Even though this is tragically the last time we’ll get to enjoy a fresh Bump of sweetness on the other side of Christmas, we can feel at peace with the fact that the show ended in the same fashion that it began: in finely-characterised chaos, where no emotional low point can’t be redeemed with a belly laugh. We’re seriously going to miss these characters—who knows, 2025 might be the perfect time for a start-to-finish summer binge, rewinding back to those opening contractions in a school bathroom stall…
